Time

When dealing with loss of any sort, most, if not all of us, experience grief. It’s a terrible feeling and, for some people, coming to terms with grief is a long and arduous process. I’m not going to sit here today and try to tell you how to deal with grief because we all experience grief differently. I just wanted to write about grief and hope that maybe my experiences and my continuing to experience grief will help you recognize those who are grieving.

In the past, I’ve written about how, over the last 3 years, I have experienced deaths in my family. My great grandfather in 2012, my great grandmother in 2013, and my grandfather last year, in 2014. With the deaths of my great grandparents, I don’t think they ever truly sunk in with me. Part of that, I feel, has to deal with the fact that they lived so far away from me, I never had to actually confront the fact that they were gone. However, when my family and I would go south to see my great aunt at the house where she had lived with my great grandparents, it was only when I was there that their absence was truly felt. When I didn’t see my great grandmother’s face and didn’t hear her trying, ever so calmly, to break up my family’s arguments. When my great grandfather didn’t have Fox News on to try and convince my mom and I of the “error” of our ways. It was only then that grief snuck in and started to worm its way into my heart, but we never stayed there for long, so I was able to escape grief’s outstretched clutches, granting me a bit more time before I fell headfirst into its cold miserable embrace.